Making things come alive
Animations are often the driving factor for shooter games to make the core of the gameplay "feel good".
Not only the shooting, but also reloading, moving and general weapon handling are important!
This blog post is a bit more technical and shorter than usual. Expect more lore and previews in the next post!
Our Animation System
We are currently developing on Unreal Engine v5.3.2 and animate everything using the in-built Anim-Blueprints for easier access and keeping things organized.
For both our EM-BR-Units and Scorchers, we are using a mix of both procedural animations and baked, hand crafted animations.
Excerpt of the AnimGraph used for the first-person-view of the EM-BR Units
While the classic baked animations make everything look good, procedural animations are mainly used to get everything to feel right.
Things like the weapon nudging downward when hitting the ground after a jump, the weapon sway when looking around or applying the walking animation additively to the extended offhand weapon arm are all used to make the game somewhat believable.
Just like our character models, our baked animations are exclusively made by external contractors since our team is not talented enough to create the high quality animations you see in the trailers :D
Ashr12 Reload Animation in Blender
Work in Progess
I've asked one of our external animators @kay.frames to explain a bit about his animation workflow, and he was happy to walk us through his approach.
I looked at games like The Finals and Delta Force (Which contain the Ash12 as a weapon) and tried looking into how the character handles the weight and follow-through of the actions performed.
I then looked at Apex/TF2 for inspiration in the fluidity and overall aesthetic. Since my animation style is usually focused on those same traits, it was rather straightforward to put everything together in my head.
Ashr12 Blockout
I also put certain emphasis on making the character feel "alive". Since this is the player character and not the mech, I figured it would be great to contrast the two with more natural movements on the former.
So, small details like the fingers reacting to the shooting, mag pulling and overall handling, or the left arm reaching out at the chest for a fresh mag were put in place to add that little bit of "extra" that we flesh-people tend to do, as opposed to the robo-mech which is all about efficiency and intentionality.
Finished Ashr12 empty reload
What tied the whole thing together was the awesome procedural animation system the team set up, it gave it that extra bit of randomness that we all love.
But yeah! Overall, tons of fun to figure all this stuff out and, of course, see it all actually functioning in-game. Really pumped to see it alongside the rest of the awesome art everyone else cooked up!
Big Shoutout to Fabián!
He really helped us out by providing high quality animations, especially to our EM-BRs and now the Scorchers as well.
If you're interested in contracting him as well, you can reach out to him via Discord or take a look at his YouTube-Channel!
Looking to participate in development as well?
Keep an eye out for an announcement in the near future!
We are looking for new, upcoming or veteran voice actors to lend their voice to our 4 classes and to mission control!
Details will follow very soon!
Thank you again for your continued support!
Also check out our socials:
Website: Official TeaMug Studios Website
TikTok: TeaMug Studios TikTok
Discord: Earths Edge Discord